La Rochelle's Road Read online

  But despite such Gallic warnings, we remain confident that Father’s skills may be put to some profitable use in helping our fellow Colonists;— if not as a clerk, then perhaps in tutoring the boys of local families, for the nearest school is half a day’s walk from here, at Pigeon Bay. So you will see, Lucy, that our situation here, though not as comfortable as we had imagined, is far from desperate.

  Hester pauses. She looks up, at the kitchen window. Outside, she can see nothing but flattened tussock and the small, sour patch of mud in which, as Delacroix predicted, nothing grows.

  Twelve

  The man behind the desk at Purvis, Reeves & Co. does not look up as Daniel walks in. His footsteps are loud on the bare boards, filling the small tin space, but the man’s head remains bent to his ledger. Daniel waits.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he begins.

  ‘Wait, will you. I’ll be with you when I can.’ The man has the harsh, drawn-out vowels of the Blackwall docks, and a bar-room brawler’s nose. With a great show of concentration, he makes a small note, slowly, in his ledger. Daniel knows his type, has met a hundred of them, on docks from Calais to St Kath’s.

  ‘I’m here to see Mr Purvis,’ he says, firmly.

  ‘Not here.’

  Daniel looks at the clock on the wall. It is five past nine. He has walked for three hours to get here. ‘May I ask when he is expected back?’

  ‘You may.’ The unlikely clerk pauses, allowing time for Daniel to feel the full shame of his English manners, then tires of his game. ‘He’s gone out on the Geraldine. Might be back next week, might not be.’ He smiles, broken-toothed. ‘Perhaps you’d like to leave your card?’

  Daniel smiles back, shakes his head. ‘Perhaps Mr Reeves is in, then?’

  ‘Perhaps he is.’

  ‘If he’s here, I’d like to speak with him.’

  ‘You are so doing, sir. I’m Reeves. What is it you want?’

  Failure rises in Daniel’s throat. He swallows it down. ‘Sir, my name is Daniel Peterson. I’m newly arrived from London —’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘And I am in search of a position —’

  ‘You build boats?’

  ‘No —’

  ‘Sail ’em, then?’

  ‘No, but —’

  ‘Then what bloody use would you be here?’

  ‘My experience,’ says Daniel, over the blood beating in his ears, ‘is as a shipping clerk with Willis, Gann & Co. of London …’

  ‘A clerk?’ Reeves makes an angry sound. ‘You think I’ve got money to waste on sleeves and collars? Why the bloody hell do you think I keep a wife, mate?’

  The clock on the wall reads six past nine. Daniel begins the walk back up to La Rochelle’s Road.

  Thirteen

  February 15th, 1867

  My dearest Lucy,

  We now own a gun! Hard as it must be to conceive of it in London, such things are quite essential in the Colonies;— here, the arrival of fresh meat for our larder is signalled by shots fired, rather than the butcher’s cart. Rob is quite the adept with our weapon already;— on Tuesday, he got ten wood pigeons before Mother bade him stop, for we could eat no more.

  Yesterday, while Mother and I were trying to make bread, our gallant menfolk returned with an entire pig they had found and shot, Father bent almost double beneath its weight. All the forest here, even ours, is full of the hairy brutes, which wander wild, belonging to no one and causing trouble for all. I should say that we had little idea of what to do with its carcass, and were forced to appeal once again to our neighbours, the Delacroixes, for instruction, which they were happy to provide in return for half of the unfortunate beast. So you see, though we are not yet truly farmers, we have already become hunters, butchers and bakers, and I am sure that before another month is out we shall be turning our hands to candle-craft as well;— such is the ingenuity our new life demands of us.

  I am very glad to hear what you tell me of ‘Cinderella’ at Covent Garden, and thank you for the beautiful programme. It is so strange to think of you stepping out in gown and cape into the darkness of a winter night! Here, our days are so long we cannot keep up with them, and take to our beds before the sun;— I thought at first I should find it hard to sleep in daylight, but by nine o’clock I am so tired it troubles me not at all.

  I wake for nothing but the birds, who, on the smallest fading of the night, set up such a racket of singing, croaking, whistling and chirruping as would rouse the most deeply enchanted of sleepers from their repose;— some mornings, I fancy myself back below decks on the ‘Matoaka’, with land sighted, and seventy-seven pairs of song-thrushes in my ears. Above me, Rob throws open his window, and threatens to shoot all those who will not be quiet, but of course the birds take not a whit of notice;— except, perhaps, to call the louder.

  Father and Rob have now cleared perhaps an acre of scrub;— a fine start, though of course progress must slow when school returns, and Rob goes down to resume his lessons. It is lucky indeed that I completed my own studies with you in London, for Mother would struggle without my help, and it seems there is not a maidservant to be had in this part of the country;— nor can we send out the laundry! My hands, dear Lucy, are not as soft as they once were.

  I hope this letter finds you well;— make sure to wrap up warmly and keep safe from the London chill.

  Your loving friend,

  Hester

  Fourteen

  Letitia stands at the kitchen table. She kneads the bread dough as hard as she can. Her shoulders ache. She sets her teeth and stares at the wall. The light in the kitchen is dim, and a cold wind blows through the gaps in the rough brown boards. She thinks it is like being shut up inside a box, a sort of crate, like those in which her father sold his rabbits.

  Once, as a child, she let the rabbits out into the fields for a treat. Her mother said it was cruel. The poor things wouldn’t know what to do out there in the wild. Better to leave them safe in their cage, until it was time for the pot.

  Letitia looks down at the dough. If it fails to rise again she does not think that she can bear it. She digs in her knuckles, one more time. She tells herself they shall not eat unleavened bread for the rest of their days, like heathens. This time, the potato yeast will work. All this flour and effort will not be wasted.

  She presses the bread into tins and puts them to prove beside the fire. She sets the copper to boil in the washhouse. She intends to pluck a brace of pigeon for dinner, but in the larder she finds the blowflies have beaten her to the final pair. The kaka Robbie shot yesterday appear to be uninfested. She takes two out to the copper to scald, and returns to clear up the mess.

  She has sent Daniel up to the Delacroixes to buy the week’s milk. He is gone a long time, and returns with a goat.

  ‘I bought her from a chap I met up the road,’ he explains. ‘Another Frenchman.’

  Letitia looks at the yellow, square-pupilled eyes. She has never liked goats.

  ‘Funny fellow,’ continues Daniel. ‘Bénichou, he was called. Looked at me as if he thought I was going to rob him. But he gave me a very good price on the goat. I’ve invited them down for tea.’

  ‘You’ve done what?’

  ‘On Saturday, at three. I’ve asked the Delacroixes, too, and a Scots chap from down in the bay.’ Daniel smiles. ‘It’ll be a good opportunity. You know, to meet our neighbours. They may help me find a position.’

  ‘But we have nothing to give them.’ Letitia fixes her gaze on Daniel, as she used to upon the horizon when her nausea rose with the ocean’s swell. ‘We haven’t enough flour. There are no eggs …’ She closes her eyes.

  ‘Don’t be cross, Lettie,’ he soothes. ‘You’ll manage splendidly, I’m sure. We’ll have plenty of milk now we’ve got the goat. You can make butter, and cheese.’

  Letitia presses her wet hands to her brow. A feather sticks to her forehead. ‘We haven’t enough tea,’ she says softly.

  Daniel sighs. ‘Well, we must do the best we can. I can h
ardly take back the invitation, can I?’

  Letitia watches him walk away. His back does not seem as familiar to her as it once did. It is growing hard and broad. The goat trails after him on its rope, snatching mouthfuls of tussock, and bleating.

  That evening, Letitia takes a jar from the shelf and counts the shillings inside it. There are almost enough to buy a hen from Sarah Delacroix. She imagines it, soft and white, such a gentle thing, with its eggs warm and brown beneath it.

  In the morning, she puts the coins in her purse. She looks around, once, at the work that remains to be done. Then she gets her coat, and begins the long walk to buy tea and flour for strangers. Her boots beat a small tattoo of hatred all the way up La Rochelle’s Road.

  Fifteen

  February 24th, 1867

  Dearest Lucy,

  We had our first social engagement at the cottage yesterday;— four neighbouring families, making some thirteen guests in all, came to us for tea. I must say that Mother had been rather concerned about catering for such a number, for here one cannot simply send out to the grocer for supplies! She spent Tuesday walking down to Pigeon Bay for extra provisions, and the next could hardly move, so sore was she from carrying the same back up the hills. Notwithstanding this, she was up before the infernal birds again yesterday morning, baking yet more bread.

  By the time our good neighbours arrived, she had quite exhausted herself;— but as it turned out, she might have spared her trouble, for our guests came with their own provisions. In fact, even without Mother’s additions to it, our pantry would have been considerably better stocked after their departure than it was before they got here.

  We have gained eggs, a cheese, half a sack of potatoes, an assortment of cold cuts and the remains of a great variety of baking. Mrs Bénichou left us a jar of the most delightful peach conserve, which I must tell you is the sweetest thing I have tasted since leaving England, and even Mrs Delacroix brought a sort of pressed offal (very French!);— although I suspect her effort may have been designed to benefit her own reputation more than ourselves (and was, moreover, composed from the pig they had had of us in the first place).

  The womenfolk had a pleasant enough time of it, generally finding sufficient matter to talk of, though we had little enough in common, but for the coincidence of our current location. Mrs Sutherland is a woman of Mother’s age, more or less, who arrived with her husband and two young sons upon their own dray, drawn by their very own horse (a possession no less enviable for his being a very workmanlike beast). Their hill country bounds ours to the west, but the majority of their land is on the flat below, where it runs down to the sea.

  Mrs Sutherland also has two daughters of about our age, but they remain at their academy in Edinburgh, and shall do so until such time as Mrs Sutherland’s new house is built, and she has gathered together sufficient comforts and society to warrant their arrival. Mr and Mrs Sutherland are Church-goers, and attend service every Sunday in the school building at Pigeon Bay;— indeed, Mrs Sutherland expressed her surprise at not having made our acquaintance there already.

  Mrs Bénichou, it is to be presumed, attends a different Church. Although she and her husband were born in the Colony, her English is not proficient, and Mrs Sutherland would not take the trouble to talk to her at all. I must confess my own French proved less fluent than I had hoped, for all the effort I put into my lessons;— still, to me Mrs Bénichou seemed a nice young woman, plain, simple, and hard-working. She is possessed of two girls who looked as though they wished for nothing but to escape our parlour and return to the bush (from which they appeared to have been extracted but recently, with some difficulty, and no employment of hairbrushes). I believe I understood Mr and Mrs Bénichou to have forty acres in the hills, from which they have just reaped their first crop of grass seed.

  Mrs Delacroix, of course, you know of, and she remains as she is, a Tricoteuse by nature if not by birth.

  But the best, Lucy, I have left until last;— let me now tell you of Miss Halloran! I suspect she is not a Churchgoer. Her age is difficult to guess;— she might be two, or twenty, years my senior. Her skin and hair are all of the same colour, bright red, the one dry and cracked, the other lank and pungent. I cannot tell you how she spoke, for I did not hear her do so, although Mother swears she got of her ‘hallo’ and ‘please’ and ‘thank ye’;— to me, she seemed as bemused to see herself among us as were, too obviously, the Sutherlands, Bénichous and Delacroixes.

  Miss Halloran, it seems, is our neighbour to the north. She lives with her father and brother, who keep an acreage high above ours, still largely in bush, which they leave but seldom. Quite how Father stumbled across them I do not know, but of course, being as he is, he would invite them with the rest;— and so, the three of them stole down through our bush (which they seemed to know well, though we had thought it trackless), a wild-looking dog at Halloran’s heels and a gun across his shoulders, to present Mother with an egg, and three potatoes.

  Of the Mr Hallorans, and the other men, I can tell you little, for they absented themselves as much as they could, occupying themselves first in a survey of our outbuildings, and then in testing the firmness of our verandah posts;— all the while avoiding the Hallorans’ dog, which had claimed our top step as its own, and seemed eager to defend it. In my hearing, much was said by them of the weather, and cattle, and seed;— Mr Sutherland commented on Father’s books, and Mr Halloran Senior did likewise, with perhaps unequal comprehension, but similar disdain.

  ‘Massey?’ yelped the honourable gentleman. ‘Wasn’t he that Chartist fellow? One of them they hanged?’

  ‘They should’ve told ye before ye left,’ broke in his neighbour, before Father could correct Mr Sutherland’s mistake, ‘ye’d have better things to do with yer time here, than sit on yer a—— readin’ that lot.’

  With that, the men withdrew and, Halloran having kicked his dog from its place, took their tobacco outside. I should add that none called for brandy;— though I dare say the Hallorans would not have refused it.

  I hope that you are now well, and fully recovered from your head cold;— as, after all these months, you are no doubt bound to be!

  Your loving friend,

  Hester

  Sixteen

  The alarm on Mrs Sutherland’s face is such that Daniel feels compelled to repeat his name more loudly.

  ‘Mr Peterson, of course!’ Her hand rises to the cameo brooch at her throat, and hovers there, on guard. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’

  Through the shadows of the Sutherlands’ long hallway, a maudlin Highland cattle beast looms out of a gilt frame, the turrets of a misty manor house rising between its horns. Mrs Sutherland pulls the front door to behind her. A fox terrier squeezes through the remaining gap and busies itself around Daniel’s dusty ankles.

  ‘You’ll be wanting Mr Sutherland,’ his hostess suggests, firmly. ‘I’m afraid he’s out on the farm just now.’

  To Daniel’s left, behind the house, the sound of hammering rings loud in the late summer quiet. He smiles tightly. ‘Perhaps I might wait,’ he offers.

  The small eyes shift, like a bog disturbed, as Mrs Sutherland weighs her options. Hat in hand, Daniel feels the midday sun drive a wedge into his temple. Slowly, she inclines her head towards the hammer’s sound, and arranges her face into a smile.

  ‘Oh! That sounds like it might be him over at the dairy, if you’d like to go and find him.’

  Daniel crosses a field of English grass, absurdly green, between neat fences of totara post-and-rail, the red timber already silvering. The terrier accompanies him, cutting wide figures-of-eight about his boots, diving in to snatch at his heels.

  He finds Sutherland in the shade behind the dairy shed, intent on fitting a butter churn with new timbers.

  ‘Peterson!’ exclaims Daniel’s neighbour, jovially enough. ‘What brings you here?’

  ‘Well.’ Daniel runs his hand over the broken churn, its wood swollen smooth and dark with milk fat. ‘I’ve been
wondering …’ He clears his throat.

  ‘What, man?’ Sutherland strikes hard at another nail. ‘Speak up!’

  ‘You mentioned you were looking for a tutor for your boys.’ The words rush out, crowded and clumsy. ‘I wondered whether I might be of service.’

  There is a moment’s silence. Daniel can hear the scratchy pant of the terrier. Abruptly, Sutherland resumes his hammering.

  ‘I’ve already enrolled the boys at Pigeon Bay, I’m afraid.’

  Daniel feels the rebuff, a neat blow, sure and economical. He looks out at the perfectly cleared fields with their placid cattle, the swathe of order that encircles the house and keeps back the raw-boned hills. It seems almost obscene; its richness sits uneasily on his empty stomach.

  ‘Of course.’ He swallows. ‘But you may wish them to have extra lessons, now and again? During the holidays, perhaps?’

  ‘Can’t see the need. They have a fine man teaching at the Bay now. And they’re good boys — they’ll learn what they need to well enough.’

  Daniel bows his head. ‘Of course,’ he says again.

  Without looking up, Sutherland selects another nail, and places a second between his teeth.

  ‘They have just one teacher there, do they?’ Daniel asks.